Tay Township council recently heard that the water treatment plants of the Rope subdivision and Victoria Harbour would take two hours to shut down as municipal water sources if a contaminant occurred.
The information was part of a brief drinking water source protection presentation by Severn Sound Environmental Association source water protection manager Melissa Carruthers, given during a committee of the whole meeting.
Carruthers, who also acts as the township’s risk management official and inspector, gave the update on risk management services, source protection authority work and an overview of drinking water source protection.
“Source water is the water from streams, lakes, rivers, and underground aquifers that are used to supply public and private drinking water systems,” said Carruthers. “That comes from one of two sources; either surface water or groundwater.
“However, when we're talking about the drinking water source protection program, we're talking about the protection of only municipal drinking water sources from overuse and contamination.”
The verbal report noted that Tay Township was a part of the South Georgian Bay Lake Simcoe source protection region, just one of 19 such regions in the province with over 52 municipalities and at over 10,000 square kilometres in size. Said Carruthers: “(Ours) has the greatest number of municipal drinking water systems across the province at approximately one-third.”
Tay is host to two intake protection zones (IPZ) at the Rope subdivision and Victoria Harbour water treatment plants, but not a wellhead protection area for groundwater system as another key vulnerable area in the program.
Carruthers stated that an IPZ 1 designation would be considered either a one-kilometre distance in the water away from a municipal surface water intake or a 120-metre distance inland as set back from the shoreline.
“IPZ 2’s are calculated based on a time it would take to shut down the system if a known contaminant entered the water,” Carruthers said of the other designation. “In this area, that's a two-hour timeframe.
“Only a very small portion of the township is impacted by this program and its regulations,” she added, noting that no municipality would be exempt as the Ontario Clean Water Act has 22 prescribed drinking water threats in multiple sectors like municipal, industrial, agricultural, and some residential.
Water protection was implemented through policies from the local source protection plan for each region.
Carruthers further cautioned that in 2025, annual inspections would be required for the township’s two risk management plans.
“There are (provincial) changes coming to some of the thresholds which could end up adding additional significant threats on the landscape with risk management plans needing to be negotiated,” said Carruthers. “Some of those may revolve around the application of salt.”
Following the presentation, Mayor Ted Walker commented that the presentation was informative and helpful, but said that he would be interested in learning more about SSEA services at regular intervals than during the annual budget discussions. Deputy Mayor Barry Norris replied that SSEA correspondence to its municipalities contained those source water protection drinking act updates.
The drinking water source protection update presentation can be found in the agenda page on the Tay Township website.
Tay council meets for committee of the whole meetings every second Wednesday of the month, and regular council meetings every fourth Wednesday of the month. Archives and livestreams of council meetings are available through the Tay Township YouTube channel.
